Kyösti Kylälä (born Gustaf Georg Adrian Byström; 16 August 1868 in Salmi – 15 August 1936 in

Vyborg Vyborg (; rus, Вы́борг, links=1, r=Výborg, p=ˈvɨbərk; fi, Viipuri ; sv, Viborg ; german: Wiborg ) is a town in, and the administrative center of, Vyborgsky District in Leningrad Oblast, Russia. It lies on the Karelian Isthmus n ...

) was a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

railroad engineer A train driver, engine driver, engineman or locomotive driver, commonly known as an engineer or railroad engineer in the United States and Canada, and also as a locomotive handler, locomotive operator, train operator, or motorman, is a pers ...

and self-taught inventor. In 1919 he patented in the UK an 'Improved means for increasing the draught in steam boilers, especially on locomotives.' Kylälä's invention, sometimes known as the 'Kylala spreader' involved the insertion of four nozzles in the

blastpipe The blastpipe is part of the exhaust system of a steam locomotive that discharges exhaust steam from the cylinders into the smokebox beneath the chimney in order to increase the draught through the fire. History The primacy of discovery of th ...

steam locomotives A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

. The system was originally devised to reduce spark-throwing and later it was claimed that there was a more even draught over the tubeplate and that the need for tube-cleaning was reduced. It was tried out in 1922 by

Lawson Billinton Lawson Butzkopfski (or Boskovsky) Billinton (4 February 1882 – 19 November 1954) was the Locomotive Engineer of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway from 1912 until the company became part of the Southern Railway in 1923. He joined the ...

on a LB&SCR K class locomotive, but with only limited success. Later the French engineer

André Chapelon André Chapelon (26 October 1892 – 22 July 1978) was a French mechanical engineer and designer of advanced steam locomotives. A graduate engineer of Ecole Centrale Paris, he was one of very few locomotive designers who brought a rigorous scien ...

, developed and improved the invention by using a second-stage nozzle and adopted the name Kylchap for this design. Kylchap exhausts are found on many French and British locomotives notably the ''Flying Scotsman'' and the world record holding ''Mallard''.

References

Further reading